Caitlin McCluskey Dean of Studies
Effective study strategies for students in the ATAR system 2020 was a landmark year for secondary schooling in Queensland as it was the first year the new Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) and Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE) system were implemented. For the first time in over 50 years, the QCE system now comprises external assessment pieces. Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) states that: 'The new QCE system combines the flexibility and authenticity of school-based assessment, developed and marked by classroom teachers, with the depth and consistency of external assessment set and marked by QCAA-trained assessment writers and markers' (QCAA 2019, p.1) . These external examinations account for 50 per cent of a student’s overall outcome in each subject within the Mathematics and Science faculties and 25 per cent for all other subjects. In addition, the external examination for Mathematics and Science subjects will cover two units (or 110 hours) of content that has been covered over the previous twelve months. In contrast, the now phased out Overall Position (OP) system had a significantly different assessment structure. The OP system operated under the principle of 'continuous assessment' with assessment being completed at regular intervals throughout the year (Queensland Studies Authority [QSA] 2014). All assessment was developed internally, and in Mathematics subjects, there was more opportunity for students to demonstrate knowledge with a minimum of four and maximum of ten assessment pieces that were used to determine an exit level of achievement at the end of Year 12 (QSA 2014). This meant that with regular testing students were not required to maintain knowledge of the unit content for long periods of time – most commonly, assessment would cover eight weeks of content. In addition, as the assessment was written by classroom teachers, it could be tailored to student knowledge strengths and depth of coverage. It is evident that the assessment styles differ greatly between the two systems – both in terms of the amount of content assessed in each piece of assessment and the additional pressures of an externally written and marked examination. Therefore, it follows that it would be beneficial for student outcomes to develop more effective approaches to teaching and learning for teachers and students alike.
Tullis et al. (2013) found that even when students implement retrieval in their study, they do not recognise the direct benefits of the strategy, only the indirect. Therefore, there appear to be two approaches to overcoming barriers to student implementation: firstly, ensuring students know what the effective strategies are and, secondly, ensuring that students attribute success (or failure) to the appropriate cause (Francis & Nagel 2020). Therefore, developing student meta-cognition is integral to countering the Dunning-Kruger effect both with respect to what they know and how they study (Dunning 2011; Kennon 2010; Krajc 2008; McGuire 2015). In addition, Hattie (2020) implores the lack of ‘teaching of thinking’ that occurs in the classroom as, despite reviewing 5,000 hours transcripts of lessons, he was unable to find a single example of teachers teaching 'how they thought, how they’re thinking, how to get better at thinking' (p. 117). It therefore stands to reason that the lack of education around how to think and study is impacting students’ ability to implement effective strategies. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) found that students prefer repeated studying as it provides increased short-term benefits. This approach would have been a successful study strategy for the previous OP system in Queensland, where examinations were administered once a term. Given the longer duration of retention required in this new system, the evidence implies that this is no longer an effective strategy.
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Yan et al. (2016) conducted a series of experiments to investigate the most effective way to dispel incorrect notions about effective study techniques. It was hypothesised that participants were often exposed to blocking rather than interleaving in their schooling and had experienced short-term success with blocking, and therefore would feel strongly that blocking would be a more effective strategy than interleaving. The study found that, of the participants who were not exposed to the theory behind interleaving versus blocking, 46 per cent
SUNATA
While teachers can control the environment in the classroom and implement effective learning strategies in their own lessons, what students do outside of the classroom is largely outside of their control. Hattie (2003) asserts that students account for 50 per cent in variability in outcomes, meaning that assisting students to work effectively outside of the classroom could have high gains, a stance Pashler et al. (2007) support. Pashler et al. also note that the development of these metacognitive skills
requires explicit intervention: 'Accurately assessing one’s own degree of learning is not something that comes naturally to our species and fostering this ability is a useful, albeit neglected, component of education' (Pashler et al. 2007, p. 1). McGuire (2015) surmises that focusing on teacher delivery only and not including the work of students as learners is leaving out half of the equation and will never result in long-term learning. In fact, she argues that if students are taught the skills of how to learn effectively, they will become productive learners regardless of their learning ability and the teacher quality in the classroom. Francis and Nagel (2020) further infer that teaching students to learn and study means being efficient and effective in these pursuits, rather than a perhaps more traditional view of hard work requiring hours and hours of study.
